The Sleepwalkers (67 page)

In so far as language is an expression of logic, in so far as logic appears to be immanent in the structure of language, one could draw from the language of a people a conclusion about the number of its ontological axioms, the nature of logic and the variability of its “style.” For the complicated ontological system of a primitive race, its widely distributed system of axioms, is what is reflected in the extraordinary complication of the structure and syntax of its language. And just as little as the change in our metaphysical view of the world can be explained on practical grounds—nobody would maintain that our Western metaphysic is more “practical” than, say, the Chinese, which stands at least on an equally high pinnacle of development—just as little can the simplification and fundamental changes in the style of languages, including their tendency to obsolescence, be explained exclusively by practical considerations, quite apart from the fact that no practical explanation suffices to account for a great number of changes and syntactical peculiarities.

But the part played by a system of axioms, whether ontological or logical, in relation to a purely logical structure, the manner in which it stamps a particular “style” on a formal logic that yet remains immutable, can be made conceivable by reference to a diagram. In certain geometrical
figures an infinitely distant point is arbitrarily assumed to lie within a given finite plane, and then the figure is constructed as if this assumed point were really at an infinite distance. The relation of the various parts to each other in such a figure remain the same as if the assumed point were really at an infinite distance, but all the masses are distorted and foreshortened. In somewhat similar fashion we may conceive that the constructions of logic are affected when the logical point of plausibility is moved from the infinite to the finite: the purely formal logic as such, its methods of inference, even its substantive associative relations, remain unaltered,—what is altered is the shape of its masses, its “style.”

The farther step taken beyond the monotheistic cosmogony has been taken almost imperceptibly, and yet it is of greater significance than any preceding one: the First Cause has been moved beyond the “finite” infinity of a God that still remained anthropomorphic, into a real infinity of abstraction; the lines of inquiry no longer converge on this idea of God (they no longer converge on any point, one may say, but run parallel to each other), cosmogony no longer bases itself on God but on the eternal continuance of inquiry, on the consciousness that there is no point at which one can stop, that questions can for ever be advanced and must for ever be advanced, that there is neither a First Substance nor a First Cause discoverable, that behind every system of logic there is still a meta-logic, that every solution is merely a temporary solution, and that nothing remains but the act of questioning in itself: cosmogony has become radically scientific, and its language and its syntax have discarded their “style” and turned into mathematical expressions.

Esch and Huguenau were crossing the market-place; it was Tuesday, the fourth of June, and a rainy day. Plump and rotund, Huguenau swaggered along with his overcoat thrown open. Like a conqueror, thought Esch venomously.

When they turned the corner by the Town Hall they met a melancholy procession; a German soldier, handcuffed and escorted by two men with fixed bayonets, was being conducted—probably from the railway station or the courts of justice—to the prison. It was raining, the drops were splashing on the man’s face, and to wipe them away he had to lift his
fettered hands every now and then and rub them against his face; it was both a clumsy and a pathetic gesture.

“What’s he been doing?” said Esch to Huguenau, who seemed to be as affected as himself.

Huguenau shrugged his shoulders and muttered something about murder and robbery and child violation:

“Or he’s stabbed a parson perhaps … with a kitchen knife.”

Esch repeated:

“Stabbed with a knife.”

“If he’s a deserter he’ll be shot,” said Huguenau, closing the subject, and Esch saw the court martial sitting in the familiar court of justice, saw the Town Commandant sitting in judgment, heard him pronouncing the pitiless sentence, and saw the man being led out into the prison yard in the spattering rain, and while he faced the firing squad wiping for the last time with his fettered hands his face, down which ran in a mingled stream rain, tears and icy sweat.

Esch was a man of impetuous moods; he saw the world divided into black and white, he saw it dominated by the play of good and evil forces. But his impetuosity often made him see an individual where he should have seen a system, and he was already on the point of blaming the Major instead of a cold and brutal militarism for the inhumanity presently to be wreaked on the poor deserter, and was just going to say to Huguenau that the Major was a swine, when suddenly it ceased to be valid; suddenly he did not know what to think, for suddenly it was quite incomprehensible that the Major and the author of that article should be the same person.

The Major wasn’t a swine, the Major was something superior, the Major had suddenly moved from the black to the white side of the world.

Esch saw the leading article quite clearly before him, and the Major’s somewhat hazy but noble thoughts seemed clear and great to him, like an exposition of man’s high duty to strive for freedom and justice in the world; and that was all the more remarkable as he found in it a restatement of his own task and his own aims, though transmuted, indeed, into such lofty, radiant and soaring language that all that he himself had hitherto thought or done appeared now dull, narrow, ordinary and purblind.

Esch stopped.

“One must pay for things,” he said.

Huguenau was disagreeably affected by the words:

“It’s easy for you to talk, you aren’t going to be shot.”

Esch shook his head and made a disdainful and slightly despairing gesture with his hand:

“If it was only a question of that … it’s a question of one’s self-respect … do you know that at one time in my life I wanted to join the Freethinkers?”

“And what of it?” said Huguenau.

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” said Esch, “there’s something in the Bible, all the same. Just you read the Major’s article.”

“A fine article,” said Huguenau.

“Well?”

Huguenau considered:

“He’s not likely to write any more articles for us … we must look out for something else.… But of course I’ll have to attend to that myself as usual, you never think of anything. And yet you fancy yourself at bringing out a paper!”

Esch gazed at him despairingly; quite obviously you could not get any further with a lump of flesh like that, the fellow couldn’t understand or didn’t want to understand. Esch would have liked to thrash him. He shouted at him:

“If you’re to set up as the angel sent to serve him, then I would rather be the devil.”

“We’re none of us angels,” replied Huguenau sagely.

Esch gave it up; they had reached the office in any case.

In the entry Marguerite was playing with a few boys from the neighbourhood. She looked up crossly at being disturbed, but Esch, paying no attention, seized her and set her on his shoulders, holding her fast by the legs.

“Look out for the doors!” he shouted, bending low at the threshold.

Huguenau entered behind them.

As they climbed the steps and Marguerite, teetering high above the banister, looked down on the courtyard, now so strangely enlarged, and on the garden that swayed before her eyes, she was seized with fear; she grabbed Esch’s forehead with her hard little hands and tried to fix her fingers in his eye-sockets.

“Be quiet up there,” Esch ordered, “look out for the door.” But it was in vain that he stooped; Marguerite made herself rigid, threw her
body back, bumped her head against the lintel of the door and began to howl. Esch, from old habit accustomed to comfort weeping women with physical caresses, let the child slide down to kissing height, but now she struggled with all her strength and flew again at his eyes, so that willy-nilly he had to set her down and let her go. Marguerite wanted to escape, but Huguenau blocked the way, making signs as though to catch her. He had looked on with pleasure as she tried to struggle away from Esch, and if she had now stayed with him instead, it would have been a great satisfaction. All the same when he saw her darkened face he did not dare to hold her back, but straddled his legs and said: “Here’s the door.” The child understood him, laughed, and crept on all-fours through the door.

Esch followed her with his eyes: “She could do you in like a shot,” it sounded as if he were moved to tenderness, “the little black rascal.” Huguenau sat down opposite him: “Well, she seems to suit your taste pretty well … but I’ll have to get a desk of my own installed here fairly soon now.” “I can’t prevent you,” Esch growled, “and anyhow, it’s about time you began to do some editorial work.” Huguenau’s thoughts were still with the child: “That kid’s always about the place too.” Esch smiled slightly: “Children are a blessing and a trial, Herr Huguenau, but you don’t understand that yet.” “I understand well enough that you’re crazy about her … otherwise why should you want to adopt somebody else’s brat?” “Your own or somebody else’s, it doesn’t matter: I’ve already told you that.” “Oh, it matters all right, when another man’s had the pleasure.” “You don’t understand that,” shouted Esch, jumping up.

He prowled up and down the room a few times, then went to the corner where the files of newspapers were piled up, pulled out a paper—it was the special issue—and began to study the Major’s article.

Huguenau regarded him with interest. Esch held his head clasped in his hands, his short grey brush of hair escaped from between his fingers,—he had a passionate, almost an ascetic appearance, and Huguenau, desirous of banishing some vague, unpleasant memory, said cheerfully: “You just see, Esch, we’ll make a great thing of the paper yet.” Esch replied: “The Major is a good man.” “That may be,” said Huguenau, “but it would be better for you to be thinking of what we can make out of the paper,” he had stepped up to Esch, and, as though to waken him up, tapped him on the shoulder, “The
Herald
must be asked for in Berlin and Nürnberg, and it must be on show in the Hauptwache Coffee
House in Frankfort too, you know Frankfort, don’t you? … it must become a paper for the whole world.”

Esch paid no attention. He indicated with his finger a passage in the article: “But if works can make no man pious, and a man must be pious before he can do good works … do you know what that means? it means that the child doesn’t matter, but only your feeling about it; another’s or your own, it’s all one, do you hear, it’s all one!”

Huguenau felt disappointed somehow: “All I know is that you’re a fool and that you’ve brought the paper to ruin with your feelings,” he said and left the room.

The door had slammed long since, but Esch still sat there staring at it, sat and thought. It was not by any means clear, but Huguenau might be right all the same about one’s feelings. Nevertheless it looked as if there was some hope of order at last. The world was divided into good and evil, debit and credit, black and white, and even if a book-keeping error should happen to creep in, then it must be expunged, and it would be expunged. Esch had grown calmer. Peacefully his hands rested on his knees, he sat placidly staring through closed eyelids at the door, saw through closed lids the whole room, which now strangely transformed itself into a landscape—or was it a picture postcard?—and was like a kiosk among green trees, the trees of the Schlossberg at Badenweiler; he saw the Major’s face, and it was the face of a greater and higher being. And Esch sat for so long that at last, filled with wonder, he knew no longer where he had got to, and only with an effort did he manage to return to his reading. True, he could have recited the article by heart, word for word, yet he forced himself to read on, and now he knew once more what side he belonged to in this world. For the reflections which the Major had addressed to the German people had made an impression on one part of the German nation, even if it was not a very important part; they had made an impression on Herr Esch.

Four women were scrubbing the hospital ward.

Surgeon-Major Kühlenbeck entered and looked at them for a moment.

“Well, how are things with you?”

“What can you expect, Herr Surgeon-Major …?”

The women sighed, then they went on scrubbing again.

One of them raised her head:

“My man’s coming home on leave next week.”

“Great, Tielden … the bed will fairly bounce then.”

Frau Tielden blushed under her brown leathery skin. The others laughed heartily. And Frau Tielden laughed with them.

All at once a noise, somewhat like a bark, was heard from one of the beds. It was not so much a bark, however, as a breathless, heavy and very painful expulsion of something that was scarcely a sound and came from far within.

Gödicke of the Landwehr sat up in his bed; his features were painfully distorted, and it was he who had laughed in such a strange fashion.

It was the first sound that had been got out of him ever since his arrival in the hospital (if one does not take into account his first whimperings).

“A lewd rascal,” said Surgeon-Major Kühlenbeck, “why, he can laugh!”